Biography:

Punchinello was a short-lived national American satirical magazine, founded in New York City April, 1870 by the former editors of Vanity Fair—Henry Louis Stephens and William Allen Stephens. In early 1870, they received financial backing from Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, William M. “Boss” Tweed, and Peter B. Sweeny, all men involved in Tammany Hall politics and corruption in New York City. Punchinello’s financial backers remained anonymous, but because of their involvement, the comedy magazine couldn’t print material explicitly mocking or derisive of the most prominent and powerful New Yorkers, rendering the magazine somewhat politically impotent.
Much like the British Punch, for which it was explicitly modeled and named, Punchinello was a sixteen-page quarto magazine featuring one full page cartoon. Probably because of its inability to be totally politically relevant, Punchinello folded after 9 months of printing due to poor sales, in December of 1870.